The course will explore the painting, printmaking, and sculpture of Northern Europe from the late 14th through the mid-16th centuries, and will provide an introduction to some of the major artists of the Northern Renaissance, including Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. We will also investigate some of the major themes of the Northern Renaissance, including (1) the nature and meaning of "realism" in Flemish panel painting; (2) how artworks were produced and marketed in Northern Europe; (3) how the newly developed medium of the print served as a tool of persuasion and subversion before and during the Reformation; and (4) how and why landscape and portraiture developed into independent art forms. We will also examine images of death and the occult, two themes that increasingly came to preoccupy artists and their audiences during the Northern Renaissance.